Miami Pirates..

In the last two weeks, we've gone to see Pirates of the Caribbean and Miami Vice -- both movies had wildly varying reviews, from "best movie ever" to "dreck!"

I loved the first Pirates movie, so I had high expectations of the sequel. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same malady of many 2nd movies...too slow, too long, and just not as engaging as the first. Dead Man's Chest is really just a two-hour trailer for the next movie (which, if Hollywood karma stays true, will be a good one). Oh, the movie is fun enough -- there are some amusing moments, the special effects are pretty good, Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow is as weird and oddly effiminate as ever.

But the new villains are just...gross. Seriously. I was actually squicked out by the bad guys -- they were just too icky and gruesome that it almost overwhelmed their actual role as bad guys. The skeletons-in-the-moonlight guys of the first movie were startling and fascinating to watch. The sea-mutants of this movie? Bleagh. Expecially for someone with a serious phobia about sea-creatures with legs.

It also confirmed my belief that while Orlando Bloom is lovely to look at, he doesn't have a whole lot of depth and Kiera Knightly doesn't actually have any facial expressions, just a weird hollow-cheeked protruding jaw thing going for her. None of them actually had much to do in the movie anyway: the choppy storyline never really gave them a purpose.

Miami Vice was a surprise. I liked it, but it's definitely an explosions-and-gunfire movie with only a passing relationship to the iconic television show. The movie is dark, grainy, and the whole things seems to be shot at night in smog. The bantering relationship between Crockett and Tubbs is not there (probably because you can't actually have Jamie Foxx -- who has an Oscar -- play a sidekick. Still, he seems to have only about thirty lines in the movie, most of which are devoted to professing undying loyalty to his partner.

The whole movie is more a modern interpretation of the series than an homag, and it's missing the spiffy clothes and Miami scenery (it's storming the entire time). The music is good, though, as we expected. The Adorable Husband enjoyed it (and the audience had a couple of "Yeah!" moments when the bad-buys bought it). Since Colin Farrel does actually get naked in the movie for a few moments, I was happy enough. Yes, I'm shallow.

I think we'll stick with watching Netflix movies downstairs. We can always fast-forward through the boring bits.